The Lion of Idaho series: Borah and the end of US neutrality during World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, the United States was a neutral country wondering: “Should we go to war?”  At issue was the sinking of the RMS Lusitania (sunk May 7, 1915) which claimed the lives of 128 Americans.  Was the US now involved?  Senator Borah urged his fellow legislators to take a hands-off approach.  He begrudgingly accepted the US’s invasion of Mexico during the coincident Pancho Villa Expedition and felt that the Lusitania did not merit breaking neutrality.

More importantly concerning whether to stay neutral or not was the selling of weapons to European belligerents.  In tail-wagging-the-dog fashion then – as today – the role of weapons manufactures was in question.  Is it a breach of neutrality to sell weapons to other states involved in war?  Borah’s Senate colleague Robert La Follette, a remarkable statesman in his own right, took up this issue.  “It is repugnant to every moral sense,” La Follette said, “that governments should even indirectly be drawn into making and prosecuting war through the machinations of those making money by it.” (197)

The war drums were beating steadily by this time.  Calls to go to war were made in the name of patriotism.  And the weapon sales that La Follette was arguing against were already taking place.  Although in 1914 Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had “advised bankers that loans to belligerents would be inconsistent with our ‘true spirit of neutrality’”, the US government decided on the laissez-faire option.  And war became good for business:

[T]he Government announced that it would not approve or disapprove credits made by American banks for the purpose of facilitating belligerent purchases in the United States. […]  So much prosperity arose from the purchases made by the Allies in the United States that in August, 1915, the Government of the United States agreed that the belligerents might float public loans in this country. (198)

JP Morgan & Co. positioned the United States to support the Allies which “fueled charges the bank was conspiring to maneuver the United States into supporting the Allies in order to rescue its loans”.  The bank funded Russia, France and England.  After the war Morgan & Co. managed the reparations from and loaned money to Germany.

Borah eventually voted for joining the war saying, “I make war alone for my countrymen and their rights, for country and its honor” (203).  Was Borah picking one current among many leading to war that he deemed acceptable, running with it, arguing for it almost as a proxy?  Liberty is quite the concept to fight for but can also serve to blind one to the complexities of many situations, especially ones involving world politics.  Near the end of his life, as the next world war was breaking out, Borah infamously said, “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler – all this might have been averted,” garnering scorn.  But who knows what would have happened if Borah could have addressed the German as men discussing pure concepts of liberty, etc.

I feel that in the events of war Borah maintained his integrity: another post could be the topic of his relation/opinion about banks.  I will let Claudius Johnson conclude with these stirring words re: Sen. Borah:

By inheritance, by instinct, by environment, by education, and by profession Borah is an individualist.  By the same token he has always stood for national individualism.  Political isolation and political isolation only, will, in his opinion, give us peace and the opportunity to work out our own democratic destiny.

Populism, democracy, aristocracy and dictators - post-election thoughts/complaints

The Bernie bumper stickers are fading.  All the hopes and dreams represented by a candidate are now forgotten as we move forward in our new reality.  This is the forgetting of the casually involved, those who activate their attention/have their attention activated for them only for the duration of the presidential election process.  Others remain involved: “the involved minority” always active on the periphery.

How much do you research politics and economics?  Oh, if you’re like me do you (sometimes?) spend more time reading about sports than you do about topics that actually matter to your life?  And keep in mind these ideas of state are debated by motherfuckers who study this shit full time.  Which means your part-time, exclusively tuned-in only during the months around the election research amounts to a drop in the intellectual bucket.

What is the right way?  Kaleidoscopic, myriad interests.  Fundamentally different moral bases that people operate from.  Different levels of intellect demanding different levels of stimulation.  What are the foundational ideas of a nation?  Of a people?  Of a family?  How do you debate merits of a presidential candidate when you cannot agree to common definitions of words you debate with?

Is it not time to reach a consensus on fundamentals instead of the clusterfuck of interests that our distracted attention spans so cloudily focus on for brief periods of electoral time?  Can we not cede – if we do not already in practice do – the responsibilities of deciding our interest to those who are more intelligent?

We do cede decision-making powers to others since our government, fed-state-local, is representative.  How do you decide what being intelligent is, though?  That is a big question and recently I was considering the work of Jose Ortega y Gasset in this light.  Basically, let an aristocratic class solve our problems – this has been the state of affairs in so many times and places throughout history.  Heck, you may even say that it is the case today, though we celebrate some kind of ideal of democracy.

Everyone is equal and gets to have a say.  Mob rule.  Isn’t this the ideal?  Is this possible?  Desirable?  I’ll be honest: based on the way my fellow Americans behave I would like a beneficent dictator to take over.  Remember, dictator did not always have a negative connotation.  If only those that rule today had the interests of the people in mind . . . um, never gonna happen, right?

Efforts toward perfection

There’s your choice: no fucking choice . . .  Sad, what are our options?  I am firmly ensconced in the choices I’ve made – happy, really – in a redoubt of familial obligations, duties by choice.  This limits, in my mind, what I can do, what I should do.  Also this redoubt jibes with the idea of primarily changing oneself.  First yourself and then the world and how goddam true that is.

We want the United States to change but ignore that role in ourselves – a bit ingenuous though.  I will say that some of those out acting (striving, being activists) have made the turn, have changed themselves, are the change they want to see.  Good.  A single man as I once was might live simply – ask a lot of questions – and go forth as an agent of change, go fight for what is right.  That is what some of those activists are.

But back it up a minute.  What change is on offer?  You took to the streets for Trump but didn’t do anything during Obama’s time?  Whoa, whoa, whoa, I need to slow down and back up a minute myself.  Think Standing Rock.  Yes, people have been involved.  The structures run deep and the Standing Rock people are experiencing what a challenge to these structures gets you: attacks by dogs, acoustic bombardment to achieve psychological disruption, being sprayed with water while it is fucking freezing out.  Oh, and even more insidious: you get to stand up for a cause while most of the nation carries on in ignorance which allows the powers that be to continue with their sundry mistreatments/criminal acts.  That is the cruelest thing of all.

And it is what any person questioning any system must face: How docile has the status quo rendered the great masses of people?  How has this docility been countered?  By protesting?

I want to say that if on an individual basis everyone examined their lives we would have a populace that would have moved past fossil fuels for rational and spiritual reasons. And perhaps that is assuming too much.

But there is this idea of mass man, of mass society and it is undeniable and it stares one in the face every day.  In deciding tactics, this fact of mass society must be considered.  In deciding whether or not to even act, this fact of mass society must be considered.  The bull is still caged.  The bull writhes and bucks, relaxes then violently kicks.  What good to stand outside the cage and attempt to dictate right action to the bull?  One must prepare for and contemplate what to do once the gate is opened and the bull emerges.

In talking about mass society, Ortega y Gasset (OyG) contrasts the mass of people with minorities, minorities being groups where each member must “separate himself from the multitude for special, relatively personal, reasons”.  Minorities used to run the world, OyG argues.  But now the majorities have stepped forward and live as an unquestioning, non-deciding mass that follows rather base pleasures and who live unexamined lives.

Striving is what separates the two groups, as OyG elucidates:

For there is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.

Damn.  Never mind, it’s off to Standing Rock for this chap.  But again, hold on a minute: is that my “effort towards perfection” as OyG states?  It sure as heck would involve “piling up difficulties and duties”.  Après election and being in this world in general I will at least keep asking questions.  And read some more Ortega y Gasset as well.